December 02, 2017

Unpopular Advent 2017 - Day 2

If Ray Davies recognises the limitation of Pop as a short-form medium then Stephin Merritt surely makes continued parries to suggest this need not necessarily be the case. His '50 Song Memoir’ set (wherein he writes a song about/for each of his 50 years on Earth) echoes his timeless '69 Love Songs' opus (referenced here in my own 50 year celebration project) in blending academic understanding of musical construction (it’s all beyond me, frankly) with instinctive pleasure (which I obviously delight in). To this splendid melange '50 Song Memoir' brings the added element of autobiography. Or at least it brings autobiography in Pop-shaped form in that there must by definition be a sense of fantasy, illusion, un-reality. Merritt’s songs playfully play up to the tropes and themes of the times they pass through, referencing both lyrically and aurally the shifting tides of history both personal and cultural. One wonders if the effect is lessened for anyone even slightly out of sync with the 50 year period Merritt moves through. Is the connection lessened to one not born within a year or two of Merritt? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Personal favourites change with the seasons, but I cannot help but keep coming back to ‘Hustle 76’. It acts as exemplary reminder that for most ten year olds of the times the predominant musical movement was not the but the blank generation of punk but the euphoric bliss of Disco. It reminds us too that the Year Zero hysteria of punk forced many who were ten in 1976 to later pretend disavowment of Disco (and later still to disavow that pretence). All of which means that ‘Hustle 76’ then is Disco seen through the exquisite lens of enforced detachment suffused with necessary theatrical distortion and illusion. No coincidence, surely, that it appears to reference Adam and The Ants glorious 'Prince Charming’ in its opening lines; a song from five years in the future that itself will cast punk’s re-invention of personal identity in extravagant outfits bedecked in gaudy paste jewels from the theatrical costumier. ‘Hustle 76’ is the sound of multi-coloured dance floors pulsing with the promise of a heady abandon which is tantalisingly out of reach, doomed to immediate unfashionable obsolescence yet irresistibly appealing. It’s the sound of looking backwards and forwards in the same moment, caught forever in the oscillation of a desire barely understood and simultaneously missed. How could I not love it?